West of the Olt the Oltenian plain is a series of terraces reaching up to 984 feet in elevation. East of the Olt is the Baragan plain. The Oltenian area was largely forested in the past. The Baragan area had fewer forests. Also known as Wallachia, a name derived from the Vlachs, as the people were called who lived here at the beginning of the 10th century.

- the Greeks established colonies on the shore of the Black Sea -Histria, Tomis (now Constanta) and Callatis¹ (now Mangalia) -during the 7th-6th centuries B.C. In 514 BC the Dacians strongly resisted a Persian army of King Darius I. In the 3rd century BC, Geto-Dacian tribes on the Wallachian plain withstood attack by King Lysimachus of Thrace under their leader, Dromichaetes. Burebista (70-44 BC), a strong Dacian ruler, extended his control over the Greek Black Sea cities and as far north as Bohemia. Another Dacian ruler, Decebalus (AD 87-106) brought the Dacian state to the pinnacle of its centralization and independence. He was finally slain after two campaigns (AD 101-2 and 105-6) against the Roman legions of the Emperor Trajan. Dacia then became a Roman province, and the Romans brought in colonists to settle it.

- Dacia remained Roman from 106 to 271, and the Latin tongue replaced the old Thraco-Illyrian, although some of its common words remained in usage. Gradually the Daco-Roman population was assimilated and became Romanized. The Romans built roads, bridges, fortifications, and other works in Dacia. These were left behind as the frontiers of the empire came under attack by successive waves of barbarian invaders. These invasions would last a thousand years. Decius temporarily halted the Goths at Nicopolis on the Danube, and in 251 perished at Abritum in another battle with the Goths. Claudius defeated the Goths in Serbia in 268. Aurelian beat back the Alemanni but decided Rome could not hold Dacia and ordered it evacuated in 271, yielding the land north of the Danube to the barbarian hordes. Nearly all the invaders that swarmed into southern Europe until the 10th century marched into Romanian lands.

- after the 4th century, waves of migratory peoples passed over the Wallachian and Moldavian plains. The Goths stayed long on Romanian soil, but there is little or no trace of their having been there. Their language had no effect on that spoken by the Latinized populace. Later, a Mongolian race, the Huns, occupied the area between the Danube and Tisza rivers from 375-453. On the heels of the Huns came a Gothic stock people, the Gepidae (453-566) who allied themselves with the eastern Roman empire headquartered at Constantinople. They were followed by a relativeof the Huns, the Avars (566-799), who came in just ahead of the Slavs. The Slavs had been infiltrating the area for some time, and now they came in great numbers. Settling on the plains of Romania with the Romanized people, they later moved to the Carpathian highlands, settling in its valleys. In time the Slavs became assimilated with the Romanians. The Bulgars, a people related to the Huns, swept in during 679, adopted the slavic language, and became assimilated with the Slavs. One of the Bulgar leaders, Boris I, was baptized in 865 in the Orthodox Church. Legend says his Christian motives occurred after a Byzantine painted a gruesome picture of hell on his palace wall. The Daco-Roman population had already accepted Christianity in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. In 840 and 890 the Hunnish Magyars occupied the Danubian plains but eventually gave them up and settled in what is now Hungary and Yugoslavia. The Transylvanian province of Romania was ruled by Hungary from the 11th century until 1918. Of the hordes of migratory people, the Magyars planted the last permanent settlements on European soil. The Pechenegs succeeded the Magyars on the plains of Romania and then disappeared, probably in wars with their neighbours and Byzantium. In 1050 there came the Cumans, a Finno-Ugric tribe, who also eventually settled in Hungary. In 1241 the last of the conquering hordes, the Mongolian Tatars, seized coastal areas of Romania. At the beginning of modern times, the Ottoman Turks extended their empire into Romania in the 1300s.

- the first mention of the Romanians in the lands that eventually became their kingdom appear in documents dated in the 1160s. According to a Byzantine chronicler, a large force of Wallachs (or ancient Italian colonists) assisted the Byzantine army in a campaign against the Hungarians. Later a strong Bulgaro-Romanian kingdom was defeated by Hungary in 1230, and Wallachia continued as a fief of the Hungarians. From 1290 to 1308 Prince Basarab established a principality over Wallachia that was semi-independent of Hungary. Subsequently, in the middle of the 1300s another prince, Bogdan, created the principality of Moldavia. Meanwhile, Transylvania under Hungarian rule enjoyed a high level of autonomy until 1526; and Dobruja, another feudal state, gained independence in the early 14th century and would later unite with Wallachia.
     At the end of the 14th century the Turks stood on the shores of the Danube, and there now came to the forefront several Romanian leaders who became prominent in their struggles with the Ottoman Empire. The first of these was Mircea the Old of Wallachia (1386-1418). He annexed Dobruja and won a victory over the Turks in 1394 but later accepted Turkish suzerainty. Other Wallachian princes, Dan II (1420-1431) and Vlad the Impaler (1456-62, 1476),continued the struggle. Vlad had some success fighting the Turks, but in 1462 they marched into Wallachia. Meanwhile, Alexander the Good of Moldavia (1401-1431) helped stabilize his principality.
 

Wallachian Cities

    BUCHAREST - The city developed on the site of a Dacian settlement but was first mentioned in documents only in 1459.

    CONSTANTA - is located on the Black Sea.  The site and locality of Constanta is rich in legend, mythology, and history. The foundations of the city were laid in the 6th century BC when Greek colonists built the city Tomis on its site.
     Burebista, a Dacian chieftain, occupied Tomis and the Greek cities along the coast in the 1st century BC and organized them into a strong Dacian state that extended to the Carpathians. The Dacian state reached the height of its power under Decebalus (87-106). Roman legions under Emperor Trajan occupied Dacia in 106; and the process of Romanization of the Dacians began, which lasted until 271. Gradually the Daco-Roman population became a Latin-speaking people. The Romans gave the name Scythia Minor to the present region of Dobruja, including the Black Sea coast around Constanta. In the 4th century, Christianity spread into the Danubian provinces.
     With the spread of the influence of the Eastern Roman Empire headquartered in Contantinople into the Black Sea coastal area, Tomis was again modernized and changed in its features.Constantine the Great ordered the city rebuilt and changed its name to Constantiana to honour his sister. Rebuilt in the 4th century, the city was left in ruins by the migratory Avars in the 6th century.

    BRAILA - Braila is located on the west bank of the Danube river in the southeastern part of Romania. The city lies 21 miles south of Galati.
     The first document to mention the city originated in 1368 by a Wallachian prince. By his authority goods were permitted to be shipped into and out of Braila by traders from the city of Brasov. On the Danube just north of the city there are the ruins of an ancient bridge which tradition says was built by Darius I, the Persian king who invaded the area of Wallachia in 514 BC.

    PLOIESTI - it is situated on the Wallachian plain between the Prahova and Teleajen River valleys. It is located 37 miles north of Bucharest. Ploiesti was a small city.

    CRAIOVA - was first mentioned in a document on June 1, 1475; less than 20 years later another document specified that the headquarters of the bania, an important feudal, political, and military institution, was moved from Strehaia to Craiova and that its authority was extended over the whole Oltenian territory.
     The Geto-Dacians had a settlement here called Plendava; the Romans erected a castrum; and the traces of the defense wall crossing Oltenia from the west to the east, known as Trajan's Wall, can still be seen in Craiova.
 
    BUZAU - is located 68 miles northeast of Bucharest on the south bank of the Buzau River. The Buzau River is a tributary of the Siret, which enters the Danube near Galati.

    DROBETA-TURNU SEVERIN - located on the Danube River in southwest Romania, Drobeta-Turnu Severin is situated on the northern bank of the river where it forms a large bend in its course after exiting the Iron Gates. Drobeta-Turnu Severin was founded on the site of a former Dacian settlement known as Drobeta. The Romans knew the town as Drobetae or Drubetis. In the third century AD the Roman Emperor Severus built a tower there to commemorate a local victory. The tower was called Turris Severi (Tower of Severus) and contributed its name to that of the present-day city. Between AD 98 and 102 the Emperor Trajan had a narrow road chiseled out of stone on the nearby Yugoslav side of the Danube through the Iron Gates. This road, cut six feet into the rock, ran a distance of 12 miles. The ancient Roman road was connected with the Romanian side of the Danube by Trajan's Bridge (built between 103 and 105). It was the longest bridge ever built by the Romans in their empire.
     The town became the capital of the Banat of Severin in the twelfth century. A medieval citadel that protected it was destroyed in the sixteenth century by the Turks.

    TIRGOVISTE - located 51 miles northwest of Bucharest in the valley of the Ialomita River, a tributary of the Danube.
     Between the 14th and 17th centuries, Tirgoviste was the capital of Wallachia.
     The city is full of history with its old buildings, churches, monastery, and the old palace. The palace was founded by Mircea the Old, ruler of Wallachia (1386-1418). The palace is mentioned in a document dated 1396.

    SLATINA - located on the Olt river. It was built in the 14th century.

    RIMNICU VILCEA -  located on both banks of the Olt river. The city lies in the foothills of the Subcarpathians.
 

Transylvanian Cities²

    BRASOV - lies 106 miles north of Bucharest. It is located in the central part of Romania and lies in the major gateways leading through the central part of the Carpathians. Nearby mountain passes lead to Wallachia and Moldavia.
     In 1211 the Teutonic Order of Knights settled on the site of Brasov; German settlers poured into the area and gave the name Kronstadt to their settlement. The district around Kronstadt was called Burzenland by the Germans. Kronstadt was one of seven major fortified towns which the Germans founded in Transylvania. In 1224 King Andrew of Hungary granted the Saxons, descendants of the original German settlers, a large degree of autonomy which they were vigilant in maintaining for centuries. The Saxons believed their autonomy helped to preserve their cultural and ethnic identity and attempted to keep the Romanians and Magyars out of important positions in their towns or from owning property in them. The traditional rights and privileges of the Saxon "nation" continued even after Transylvania passed into the hands of the Habsburgs.
     The city was attacked by the Turks on several occasions, who successfully took it in 1421 before its citadel was completed. In 1434 the Turks again attacked it, but this time they were repulsed by heavy fortifications.

    TIMISOARA - set amidst a rich plain, crossed by the Bega River. Timisoara is situated near the Yugoslavian border.
     Timisoara is an ancient settlement. The former Castrum Temesiensis was mentioned in documents dating as far back as 1212. The Tatars sacked the city in the 13th century. During the 15th century it was rebuilt and enlarged by Lancu of Hunedoara, who was count of Timis at the time (1441).
             - HUNIAD CASTLE - was built on the site of the former city which was a seat of the Romanian ruling princes for centuries. It was erected by Carol Robert d'Anjou in 1316 and redecorated and enlarged by Lancu of Hunedoara (15th century).

    SIBIU - is located in the southern part of the Transylvanian plateau. The city lies astride the banks of the Cibin River, a tributary of the Olt.
 The Romans were here and built a settlement (Cibinium) to guard one of their principal roads leading into Transylvania. The city's proximity to the Turnu Rosu pass made it an important transportation and communication artery. The site of the old city is mentioned in documents as being founded in 1191, when settlers from Saxony arrived on its location. Many Germans settled in the area and the town became known as Hermannstadt.
     Medieval Sibiu was the site of a fortress built in the13th century, which was destroyed by the Tatars in 1241 and rebuilt a century later.

    ALBA IULIA - located at the juncture of highly traveled ancient roads. It is located in the middle of the country at the confluence of the Ampoi and Mures rivers in the eastern part of the Western Mountains.
     Alba Iulia was a municipality at the time of Septimius Severus (2nd-3rd centuries AD); and the town, then the capital of the province of Dacia Apulensis, was well known (it was called Apulum).
     Under the name of Balgrad (White Fortress) during the 8th-13th centuries, it became a local Romanian political center (probably governed by Voivode Geiu). It survived the Tatar invasion.
     The Saxons knew it as Karlsburg or Weissenburg.
             - ROMAN CATHOLIC CATHEDRAL - The lateral naves shelter the sarcophagi of Lancu of Hunedoara and the Zapolya and Sigismund royal families.
             - SINTIMBRU VILLAGE -  in the Mures River valley (7 miles northeast). Lancu of Hunedoara fought one of his first battles here against the Turkish armies.
             - CRAIVA VILLAGE - is located at the bottom of Piatra Craivii Mountain (13 miles northwest). The Dacian fortress, (2nd century BC - 1st century AD), stretching across the high plateau and several artificial terraces, is the remains of ancient Apulon mentioned by Ptolomy (AD 90-168) in his Geography.
             - SEBES - a town at the confluence of the Secas and Sebes rivers, 11 miles south of Alba Iulia. Settled in the 12th-13th centuries, it became an important center of government in 1345 and a powerful trade center during the Middle Ages.

    DEVA - located south of the Mures River, at the foot of the last branches of the Poiana-Ruscai Mountains.
     After a period of disorganization created by the death of the great king of the Dacians, Burebista (44 BC), who achieved the first centralized Dacian state, the area was reorganized under the leadership of the brave and wise king of all Dacians, Decebalus (AD 87-106). In this process, the area surrounding the capital of the state, Sarmizegethusa, became quite important. The traces of the Roman rule in Dacia, following their victory in 106 under the Emperor Trajan, are numerous throughout the county. Archaeological findings in this area point to intense and permanent settlement by the Daco-Roman population after the withdrawal of Roman legions from Dacia (AD 271). The homogeneous Romanian population organized its ranks while keeping in close contact with the Romanians beyond the Carpathians and made strong opposition to the expansion and exploitation of their area by the Magyar nobility.
             - SARMIZEGETHUSA - this village, located in Hunedoara County in the western part of the country, was the capital of ancient Dacia. It lies near the town of Orastie. Founded in the 2nd century BC, it was the economic, military, political, and religious center of the Dacian state. In the old precincts, destroyed when the city was conquered by the Roman imperial armies.
     Rebuilt by the Romans after the conquest of Dacia Sarmizegethusa became the headquarters of a detachment of the 4th Legion Flavia Felix.
             - ULPIA TRAIANA SARMIZEGETHUSA - 38 miles from Deva. The citadel was founded, in AD 110, after the conquest of Dacia by the Romans, on order of Emperor Trajan,  and soon became an important political, religious, and cultural center. It lies to the west of the Dacian city of the same name. After conquering the old Dacian capital, the Romans founded its counterpart on a plain whose site they preferred to that of the mountainous capital. They built a large citadel, an amphitheater, and other buildings at their town, which they called Colonia Ulpia Traiana Augusta Dacia Sarmizegethusa.

Moldavian Cities

    GALATI - the city is situated where the Danube, after flowing north, bends to the east for its final run to the Black Sea.

    SUCEAVA - located in a picturesque hilly area on the banks of the Suceava. It was the residence of the Moldavian princes (14th-16th centuries).
     As the old capital of Moldavia, Suceava is mentioned in documents of the 14th century (Prince Petru Musat I erected the Princely Citadel here after 1388, still intact). Suceava was a famous commercial center and customs site in the 15th and 16thcenturies.
             - PRINCELY CITADEL - it stands on a high hill on the eastside of town. The Princely Citadel was originally erected to serve as a fortified castle for Prince Petru Musat I, who moved Moldavia's capital from Siret to Suceava. Around 1400, Alexander the Kind changed it to a citadel with a strong military presence.
             - MONUMENT OF MEDIEVAL ARCHITECTURE MIRAUTI - was founded by Petru Musat I (14th century). The building was the site of the coronation of the first princes of Moldavia.
             - PRINCELY COURT - It was first built of stone by Stephen the Great on the ruins of a wooden palace dating from the reign of Petru Musat.
 

DANUBE RIVER AND DELTA

 - the Danube has since earliest times been one of the most traveled waterways of the continent. The Danube has been called by many names: "Istros" in Egyptian legends and in the language of the Argonauts; "Phisos" by the Phoenicians; "Danare" by the Romans; "Danubius" in the language of the Scythians; "Rio-Divino" at the court of Charles V.

    ENISALA - 5 miles east of Babadag (23 miles south of Tulcea). In ancient times it was a walled city by the same name, later a Roman military camp, then a Genoese and Turkish fortification, ruled over a time (14th century) by Mircea the Old, ruling prince of Wallachia.

Dacia Before the Roman Conquest
     The earliest known inhabitants of the present kingdom of Roumania were the Getae or Dacians, of whom ancient Greek and Roman writers make such frequent mention. Herodotus has much to say about the Getae, who early came into contact with the Greek colonies on the West Coast of the Black Sea. He calls them "the bravest and most honourable of all the Thracian tribes," and speaks of them as endeavouring to oppose the march of the Persian King Darius. Thucydides alludes to their prowess with the bow and arrow on horseback, and fixes their abode on the shore of the Euxine. At that time however, they had not yet crossed the Danube,but were living in the district south of that river known as the Dobrudza.
     ...Alexander the Great in the course of his Thracian expedition, found himself confronted on the left bank of the Danube by an army of Getic horsemen and foot-soldiers, who refused to allow him to land. Undaunted, he waited till night came on, crossed the river lower down at daybreak and fell upon the Getae, whom he defeated and put to flight. But the defeat had no lasting results. Some fifty years later they had their revenge. Lysimachus, who succeeded to the Thracian dominions of Alexander, attempted to chastise them for the assistance they had rendered to the barbarous tribes of Macedonia. But he made the mistake of despising his enemy. Wearied with long marches, and oppressed with thirst in a barren land, his great army was forced to surrender to the Getic king, Dromichaetes. The victor displayed an unwanted generosity towards the vanquished Macedonian. He led him to his capital, a place called Helis and treated him as his honoured guest. Lysimachus secured his liberty by the payment of a heavy ransom, and 50 years ago (circa 1845) gold pieces, bearing his name, were found in Roumania, where the natives used them as signet rings and ornaments.
     But with the first appearance of the Romans on the confines of Dacia a new era in the history of the nation began.The first conflict between the two peoples took place in 111 BC, when the Roman legions, already masters of Macedonia, had advanced to the Danube, and found the Dacians assisting the tribesmen of the right bank against them. For some time, no Roman general thought it desirable to enter their territory; and when at last a commander crossed the Danube, he hesitated to entrust himself to the somber gorges of the Carpathians, where the Dacian warriors lurked in readiness to surprise the rash invader. If it had not been for the incursions of the Dacians into the Roman provinces, a Roman occupation might have been indefinitely postponed, and the Roumanian race might never have existed.
     But under a king called Boerebistes these raids became so serious, that Rome was alarmed for her supremacy in the Balkans. Boerebistes was at the head of a powerful nation, which had gradually absorbed all the minor races up to the frontier of modern Bavaria, and could put two hundred thousand men into the field. His soldiers had been seen as far south as the Balkan slopes, and were threatening Macedonia and the Dalmatian coast. Caesar himself was meditating a Dacian campaign, and had actually assembled troops for it, when the dagger of Brutus laid him low. The Dacians would have been no unworthy foe of the great Roman captain. They were well armed and well led. They knew the use of breast-plates and helmets, and their curved swords were scarcely less deadly than the poisoned arrows, which they fired from horseback.
     ...The exploits of the Dacian king Cotiso are mentioned by contemporary Roman authors, and the gossips of the forum would have it that Augustus intended to marry the daughter of the terrible barbarian, and thus secure peace for the Empire. Whenever the Danube was frozen over, the Dacians crossed on the ice and ravaged the Roman province of Moesia far and wide. The fortified towns on the Black Sea kept their gates shut night and day for fear of these savage warriors, and the poet Ovid, who spent several years of exile among them, wrote with the utmost respect of their martial prowess. The death and defeat of Cotiso, though hailed with enthusiasm at Rome, and followed up by the construction of forts along the right bank of the Danube, were merely temporary checks to the Dacian power.
     The policy of the early Roman Emperors was to prevent the Dacian bands from crossing the river, not to annex their country to the Empire. When the civil war of 69 AD necessitated the withdrawal of the legions from Moesia, a Dacian invasion of that province at once followed, which was repulsed by orders of Vespasian. Once again, the sole means of pacifying the people was to transplant them over the river. Dacia at this period was little more than a desert, and it looked as if the nation were on the point of disappearing, when a great chief arose and led it to renewed victories. This man was Decebalus whose name, "the strength of the Dacians," is the most appropriate summary of his career. Possessing a scientific as well as a practical knowledge of warfare, he spent the first two years of his reign in making preparations for attacking the Roman possessions south of the Danube. It is said that he even attempted to form an alliance with the Parthians against the common foe. In 86 he at last crossed the Danube with a disciplined army behind him, and drove the Romans to the Balkans before him. Two Roman generals succumbed to his arms,and the historian Tacitus might well regret the defeat of the Roman legions and the capture of a Roman standard. At the news of this double reverse the Emperor Domitian took the field in person against the Dacian monarch. But he cautiously remained at his headquarters in a small Moesian town, and entrusted his lieutenant, Julianus, with the task of bearding Decebalus in his own country. Julianus defeated the Dacians at a place called Tapae, the site of which is uncertain, and besieged, for the first time in its history, the capital of Sarmizegethusa, the modern Varhely. But the exigencies of Roman policy necessitated a speedy peace, for there were other dangerous tribes besides the Dacians to be subdued. Decebalus had no objection to come to terms with his enemy, and sent his brother as an envoy to the Roman camp. The favourable concessions, which he obtained from Domitian, prove that the Emperor was afraid of driving him to extremities. Decebalus restored the prisoners, whom he had taken, and received in return the title of king; while Domitian added the surname of "the Dacian" to his other designations, and celebrated on his return an empty triumph in honour of his vicarious successes. Domitian had, in fact, bought his scanty laurels by the promise of an annual tribute to Decebalus.
     But the accession of Trajan, in 98, soon put an end to this ignominious arrangement. The fullest preparations were made to show the "barbarians" that they were no longer able to insult the majesty of Rome with impunity. Six legions were assembled at the present town of Kostolac (Viminacium) in Serbia, where they were reviewed by the Emperor. A durable monument of the war exists to this day in the Roman road, begun by Domitian and finished by Trajan, along the right bank of the Danube as far as a point opposite Orsova. In some places the road was hewn through solid rock, in others it consisted of planks fastened over the water along the perpendicular face of the cliff. Crossing the Danube on two bridges of boats at Kostolac and Orsova respectively, the Romans entered Dacia in two divisions, while the two flotillas supplied them with provisions. The Dacians themselves recognised that this time they had a man to deal with, and sent a gigantic fungus to the Emperor, upon which was scratched in Roman characters the request that he would leave them alone.
     But the Emperor's march was slow and difficult. No fewer than eighteen months were spent in advancing sixty-five miles to the spot where the two divisions of the army were to meet. The mountains lent themselves to guerilla warfare, at which the Dacians excelled; huge boulders of rock were rolled down upon the heads of the soldiers as they entered the narrow ravines; showers of arrows impeded their progress as they forded the deep streams. At Tapae, the spot where Decebalus had been defeated fourteen years earlier, they at last met the foe in open combat. The victory of the Romans was hardly bought. The invaders now marched upon the Dacian capital, which, after a desperate engagement, fell into their hands. A great booty, including the standard,which had been captured by the Dacians in the last war, rewarded the Romans for their hardships. Decebalus saw himself deserted by his allies, his sister taken prisoner, his treasures carried off. He bowed his neck to the yoke, resolving to reserve himself for better days. The Emperor dictated peace on his own terms. He ordered the king to surrender all his arms, to dismiss the Roman deserters, who had joined his army, to raze his fortresses and abandon all his foreign conquests. Trajan was contented with what he had accomplished. Leaving a garrison behind him at Sarmizegethusa, he took with him to Rome a Dacian embassy, for the ratification of the treaty.
      But there was little finality about Trajan's first expedition. Decebalus had only submitted as a temporary expedient, and as soon as his conqueror had gone, he recommenced his forays, and formed a fresh league of tribes against the Roman Empire. Trajan resolved that this time he would finally annex Dacia to his dominions and have done with these troublesome warriors, who had only submitted in order the better to attack him. As a first step towards the annexation of the country, he ordered the construction of a more permanent means of communication than the bridge of boats, which had served to convey his army across the Danube during his former campaign. Opposite the present town of Turnu-Severin there may still be seen in the river several piles of the magnificent stone bridge which Apollodorus of Damascus, the most famous architect of that period, erected for the Emperor in 104 AD.³ This done, Trajan declared war against Decebalus, who endeavoured to rid himself of his great enemy by assassination. He had previously seized the commander of the Roman garrison at Sarmizegethusa and refused to give him up, unless the Emperor recompensed him for his losses in the last war. The brave Roman officer took poison in order to relieve Trajan from this dilemma, and the scanty ruins of the mausoleum, which his grateful master raised to his memory, are still to be seen a little to the north of Varhely.
     The second Dacian campaign of Trajan was easier than the first. Decebalus offered to make peace. But Trajan replied that he must first lay down his arms. The Dacian monarch preferred to die, and held out with a mere handful of men against the Roman army. No quarter was given on either side; the Roman soldiers cut off the heads of their prisoners and stuck them on pikes; the Dacian women fastened their captives' hands behind their backs and applied torches to their bare bodies. A final battle beneath the walls of the capital ended the war. The Dacians set fire to the town and took poison to avoid falling into the hands of their enemies. Decebalus, tracked by the legionaries to his retreat in the mountains, sank exhausted at the foot of a tree; and when the Romans advanced to seize him, plunged a dagger into his breast. Dacia lay at the mercy of the conqueror. By the end of 106 it had become a Roman province. The Emperor, after remaining a short time to arrange for its future administration, returned to celebrate, by what was perhaps the most magnificent spectacle of ancient Rome, his final subjugation of the Dacian people.
     The most striking memorial of his Dacian conquest is to be seen at Rome. Trajan's Column is an epitome in marble of his two campaigns against Decebalus, and forms a priceless commentary upon the early history of Roumania.

The Romans in Roumania
     The Roman province of Dacia, which was constituted upon the ruins of the kingdom of Decebalus, was considerably larger than modern Roumania. For the Dacian realm had included Transylvania and other portions of what is now Austro-Hungary, and the circumference of the province was thirteen hundred miles.
     The ravages of war had decimated the natives, and in order to people so large an area it was necessary to import colonists from the Roman Empire. Trajan summoned to Dacia the veterans of his legions, the landless proletarians of Rome, the venturesome inhabitants of Spain and Gaul. Italy doubtless furnished the bulk of the immigrants. Some colonists were attracted by glowing reports of the Dacian gold mines, others expected to find their El Dorado in the adminstration of the new province. Lawyers and doctors were, of course, necessary to the civilization of the "poor barbarians" and both professions were overcrowded in Rome. The new arrivals intermarried with the survivors of the Dacian race, and the offspring of these Daco-Roman alliances perpetuated the characteristics of both parents.
     The peace, which followed the triumph of the Roman arms, assisted the amalgamation of the new and old elements in the population. Those Dacians, who had left their country rather than live under the foreign yoke, gradually returned when they saw that their fellow-countrymen were well treated by the conquerors. The famous edict of the Emperor Caracalla, which extended the citizenship of Rome to every inhabitant of the Empire, placed the "barbarian" on an equal footing with the true born Roman in the eye of the law,and reconciled him to the loss of his independence. Commerce and agriculture flourished, new mines were opened, new towns rose. Palaces, roads, baths, all the usual appendages of Roman life, sprang into existence. Dacia merited the epithet of "blessed" (Dacia Felix), which was ascribed to her on Roman medals; all over Roumania the indelible marks of the Roman occupation can be seen to this day.  The national religion, which might have been a dangerous obstacle to the progress of Roman ideas, became merged in the elastic creed of the conquerors. The mysterious grotto of Zalmoxis was closed; the solemn banquets of his worshippers ceased; and Jupiter took the place of the deity in the religious life of the people.
     The Dacians gradually lost, under the influence of Western civilization, those fierce characteristics which had made them the terror of the provinces beyond the Danube. Occasionally, we hear of disturbances, and in one instance, during the reign of Antoninus Pius, of a serious revolt. But, generally speaking, after about the year 120, when Hadrian meditated the withdrawal of his legions from Dacia and the destruction of Trajan's bridge across the Danube, the Roman occupation was firmly established in the country. Hadrian's scheme of evacuation was due to his desire to keep the barbarians out of Moesia, and his successors for the next century and a half followed the alternative policy of making Dacia an outpost of the Empire against the attacks of savage hordes. Three great military roads, still visible in many places, united the principal towns of the province; while a fourth, called by Trajan's name, traversed the depths of the Carpathians and entered Transylvania by the Turnu Rosa or Rothenthurm Pass. Two legions were usually stationed in Dacia, and their headquarters, together with the seat of government, were fixed at Apulum, the modern Karlsburg in Transylvania. On the ruins of Sarmizegethusa rose the stately Roman town of Ulpia Trajana, whose memory is still preserved by a few carved stones and a heap of broken pillars.
     With the advent of the third century the incursions of the barbarians became more threatening. Caracalla, about 212, defeated a horde of invaders, and erected as a trophy of victory the town of Karakal. The "tower of Severus", Turnu-Severin, on the Danube, marks the defeat of the tribes of Quadi and Marcomanni a few years later. But a more deadly enemy now appeared upon the frontiers. In 247 we hear of the first invasions of the Goths. From this date the old historians of Roumania date the decline of the province. At first, however, the Goths simply used Dacia as a stepping-stone to Moesia, on the other side of the Danube, and did not tarry by the way. But they soon found the one province as attractive as the other, and between 247 and 268 there were six invasions, one of which cost a Roman Emperor his life. The shrewdest Romans already regarded the Dacian province as lost. The great victory of the Emperor Claudius over the Goths at Naissus in 269, while it rid Moesia of their presence, left Dacia still at their mercy. The Roman legions, entrenched in the natural fastnesses of the Carpathians, could protect themselves, but were powerless to save the peaceful inhabitants of the plains. The next Emperor, Aurelian, resolved to evacuate the province, which he could no longer hold, and fall back upon the Danube as his firstline of defence. About the year 274 the Roman garrisons withdrew across the river, and took with them all the Daco-Roman colonists who cared to follow them. South of the Danube, in parts of what are now Serbia and Bulgaria, a new home preserved under the name of "Aurelian's Dacia," or Dacia Aureliani, the memory of the old.

The Barbarians in Roumania
     The Gothic supremacy, which lasted for a century, was a period of comparative tranquility. The victors lost much of their ferocity by contact with the vanquished; the natives pursued their agricultural pursuits without interference, and found ample occupation in cultivating the lands which their fellow-countrymen had abandoned when they migrated southward. Once, for moment, the exiles returned in the train of the Roman Emperor Constantine, who not only repulsed the attacks of the Goths upon the provinces south of the Danube about 330, but built a bridge across the river, like Trajan, though much lower down, between the Bulgarian town of Nicopolis and the modern Romanian village of Turnu-Magurele.  Constantine assumed the title of "restorer of Dacia", but contented himself with compelling the Goths to furnish a force of auxiliaries, and soon withdrew from a position which he could not maintain. But his victory introduced the doctrines of Christianity among the Goths. It is possible that the Daco-Roman colonists had already been converted, for we hear of a Dacian bishop at an early council of the Church. By 360 Dacia was a part of Christendom.
     The second batch of invaders was much more terrible than the first. The Goths were mild and civilised as compared with the savage Huns, who entered Roumania in 375. The Huns, with their pitiless cruelty, filled the inhabitants with horror and alarm. Many of the Goths were allowed by the Romans to settle on the other side of the Danube, while the natives either remained in the plans of Roumania or retreated to the fastnesses of the Carpathians. The defeat of the Huns by the Roman Emperor Theodosius I about 378 was only a temporary relief. The whole aspect of the land changed under its new masters; all settled habits of life disappeared, and nomad tribes ravaged the Danubian provinces almost without intermission. Then the "scourge of God," as Attila has been called, fell upon those unhappy regions. Modern Bulgaria, as well as Roumania, succumbed to his armies, and the Romans acknowledged him as the ruler of the latter country. But his own allies turned against him at a critical moment. The Gepidae, a Gothic race, under their King Ardaric, overthrew his dominion in Roumania and established there a new kingdom; Attila perished in 453, and with his death the Huns vanished from the Danube.
     The Gepidae maintained their hold upon the country for a century, and gave it their own name of Gepidia. We know little about them beyond the fact of their existence. At one moment they were at war with the Roman Empire, at another they were its allies. But two far more formidable foes appeared about the middle of the sixth century in the persons of the Lombards and the Avars, the former coming from the Baltic coast, the latter from the plains of Asia. United by the common desire for plunder, under the leadership of Alboin, these two tribes speedily overthrew the Gepidae, with such complete success that the vanquished race henceforth disappears. The Lombards did not stay long in the land. Accepting the invitation of Emperor Justinian to enter his service, they crossed the Danube, leaving Roumania to the Avars.The latter ruled more or less continuously in the country for eighty years, though the seat of their empire was on the site of Attila's ancient capital in the midst of the great Hungarian plain, and not in Roumania itself. But they included it in their dominions until their defeat by the Emperor Heraclius in their campaign against Constantinople in 626. By the middle of the seventh century Roumania knew them no more. Five different hordes of barbarians had swept over that unfortunate country since the Romans left, and still the descendants of the old Roman colonists remained in their mountain retreat, little affected by the waves which, one after another, had covered their land.
     The emperor had been aided in his victory over the Avars by the Bulgarian chief Kurt, or Kuvrat, a former vassal of the Avar king. Kuvrat and his successors obtained power in the old Dacian province north of the Danube, as well as in what is now Bulgaria; and in the reign of their powerful chieftain Krum, who flourished about the year 810, they occupied a large part of Roumania. During the first Bulgarian Empire, which lasted from 893-1018, Roumania was largely in Bulgarian hands.
     The warlike Hungarian race took up its abode in the eastern part of Roumania about 839. The strange habits and fierce disposition of the early Hungarians made them a terror to all their neighbours; their career of devastation recalled the memory of Attila's campaigns. Their food was the raw flesh of animals; their drink the milk of mares or the blood of their enemies. The Bulgarian monarch, Simeon, then at the zenith of his power, inflicted a severe defeat upon those who had dared to cross the Danube and approach his Balkan capital. During their temporary absence on a western campaign he devastated their settlements in Bessarabia, and, finding their home destroyed, they wandered westward again, and made the present country of Hungary their headquarters.
     While the Hungarians migrated to the West across the Carpathians, another tribe, called Patzinakitai, had entered the Roumanian land. Powerful in Roumania in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the Patzinakitai are heard of two hundred years later,when they merged in the Hungarian nation, leaving no traces of their separate existence behind them. Another barbarian tribe, the Kumani, had driven them from their seats on the Danube.
     After the First Bulgarian Empire had fallen, the old Dacian province north of the Danube gradually came under the rule of the Kumani, and recieved from them the name of Kumania. It was an era of comparative peace for the inhabitants. The barbarian inroads had ceased, and the descendants of the old Daco-Roman colonists could cultivate their farms without disturbance upon paying a tribute to their masters. The commercial importance of Roumania became recognized abroad, and a diploma of 1134 acknowledges the flourishing condition of the region round the town of Berlad, not far from the Pruth, where a sort of democratic commonwealth existed under an elected magistrate. There the products of the Levant were exchanged for the merchandise of Russia, Hungary, and Bohemia, and a brisk business was carried on with the Greek traders of the Black Sea.
     The long era of barbarian rule in Roumania was drawing at last to a close. The Kumani, who were converted to Christianity in1227, ceased to be dangerous soon afterwards, and succumbed to the attacks of the Mongol Tatars about 1240. This was the final eruption of savage hordes into the country. The only other foreigners who exercised power there at this period were men of avery different stamp, the Teutonic Knights and the Knights of St. John, who for a score of years at the beginning of the thirteenth century obtained grants of Roumanian land from the King of Hungary.

The Two Principalities
     After the departure of the Tatar hordes about the middleof the thirteenth century, the Roumanians of the mountains gradually descended into the plains and occupied the lands, which their forefathers had abandoned centuries earlier. For a generation after the last of the barbarians had gone, no settled government seems to have existed in the country, though we hear of petty chiefs, who exercised authority over their neighbours. But in 1290 a Roumanian leader, named Radou Negrou, came down from the Carpathians and established his sway over Wallachia. The early princes have not left much mark upon history. Radou Negrou and his first five successors, whose reigns together fill about a century, were chiefly occupied in repelling the claims of the kings of Hungary to their newly-constituted state and resisting the efforts of the Popes to convert them to the Roman Catholic faith. But the matrimonial alliances, which they made with the Serbian monarchs at a time when Serbia was at its zenith, show that they must have been personages of considerable influence. But in 1386 a strong man arose in Wallachia, who is known in the annals of his country as Mirtschea the Old, or the Great. Like several Balkan rulers Mirtschea obtained the throne by means of a horrible domestic tragedy. It is said that he killed his brother and seized his crown. But such violent deeds were so common in that age that they attracted little notice, while the appearance of a new and terrible enemy in the country demanded the presence of a vigorous ruler in Wallachia. In 1391 the Turks for the first time crossed the Danube. Nearly thirty years earlier a Roumanian contingent had assisted the Serbs in their disastrous attempt to recapture Adrianople from the Mussulmans, and Roumanian soldiers fought by the side of their fellow-Christians on the fatal field of Kossovo, where the Serbian Empire fell in 1389. The Sultan Bajezet sent an army across the Danube to punish Mirtschea for this act of hostility. Mirtschea, weakened by the destruction of a large part of his army at Kossovo, was defeated, captured, and sent for a time to Broussa in Asia Minor. He was, however, soon set free on condition of paying an annual tribute to the Turks. This "first capitulation" provided that "the country should be governed by its own laws, and that its ruler should have the power of making war and peace." But the document proceeds to state that "in return for Our great condescension in having accepted this rayah amongst the other subjects of Our Empire, he will be bound to pay into Our Treasury, every year, the sum of six thousand red piasters of the country." But Mirtschea did not long remain the obedient vassal of the Sultan. He made an alliance with his old enemy, the King of Hungary, against the common foe, and the two allies took part in the great battle of Nicopolis in 1396, when the Turks gained a signal victory over the fine flower of Christian chivalry. Recognising that all was lost, Mirtschea withdrew to his own dominions, where the Turks soon followed him. But this time they were not successful. The Wallachian army routed them with such slaughter that they retired, and the defeat and capture of the Sultan Bajazet by Timour the Tatar at Angora a few years later gave rise to a disputed succession, which was most favourable to the Roumanian cause. Mirtschea, who was not only a good soldier but a clever diplomatist, played off one Turkish pretender against another until the accession of Mohammed I reunited the scattered forces of the Ottoman Empire and forced him to submit. For a second time Wallachia bowed before a Turkish suzerain, while preserving her local independence.
     Mirtschea died in 1418, not long after this second submission to the Turks. Had he been born at a period when they were less powerful, he might have founded a strong kingdom.
     The next quarter of a century, in both Wallachia and Moldavia, was marked by civil wars, which distracted the principalities when they ought to have been preparing for a struggle against the Turks. In both of them the law of succession to the throne was the cause of great mischief. There was no fixed system of heredity, but every member of the reigning family had the right to succeed if elected by the nation, represented by an assembly of great nobles and clergy. If the last prince had only one son, all went smoothly; but if he had more than one, the land was honeycombed with intrigues, and there were as many parties as members of the princely family. Nor was that all. When one of the candidates had at last seated himself on the throne, he often found it necessary to secure the support of some stronger power to keep him there.

 
¹ Founded by Dorians from Heraclea Pontica at the end of the 6th century BC.
² The Germans or Saxons (sach sens), called Transylvania's lands Siebenburgen, a name generally believed to refer to the seven fortified towns they built there. The seven cities are: Bistrita (Bistritz), Brasov (Kronstadt), Cluj-Napoca (Klausenburg), Medias (Mediasch), Sebes
(Muhlbach), Sibiu (Hermannstadt), Sighisoara (Schassburg).
³ The bridge originally consisted of twenty piers, each 163 feet apart, 145 feet high, and 58 feet broad.
 

 
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